


enamored of the Night for her own sake

by okapi



Category: C. Auguste Dupin - Edgar Allan Poe
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 21:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18185675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Poe's Dupin/Narrator. Short PWP.Title is from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."





	enamored of the Night for her own sake

**Author's Note:**

> For the DW Picture Prompt Fun challenge 57, photo 114: [Chess](https://picturepromptfun-mod.dreamwidth.org/file/121502.jpg). Also for DW 100 Fandom prompt .010: shadows.

I considered it inevitable that Dupin would read my public account of his involvement in the murders of the Rue Morgue. After I left Paris, I understood from his infrequent and brief correspondence that he bestirred himself in the world as little as he did when we shared that grotesque and time-eaten residence in the Faubourg St Germain; nevertheless, I knew he read and read widely, periodicals as well as books, and so, from the moment of its publication, I braced myself for receipt of a lengthy rebuke: of my treatment of him, his methods, and the case itself. What arrived, however, when the inevitable came to pass, was a simple postcard with a single question followed by a single comment scrawled in his unmistakable hand.

_Are you not penning a romance? What a pity._

I ran my fingertip lightly over the black ink, feeling the indentation of the spidery scrawl and smiled.

I still loved Dupin, and the flirtation, even without the charming delivery in his rich tenor, made my body stir. Heat rose to my cheeks, and my heart began to pound.

The wild fervor that Dupin had once enkindled in my soul was not extinguished. On the contrary, the sentiment was, and would always be, I suspected, sleeping, like a dragon atop a horde of precious and glittering memory. Neither before nor since have I crossed paths with another human being who has impressed me so. I felt at the time that Dupin’s society would be to me treasure beyond price, and neither years nor distance have diluted that conclusion.

I fell into Dupin’s _bizzarrerie_ , into his odd habits and unconventional routines, as easily as I fell into his arms. The afternoon of our first meeting, we continued our conversation about that rare and remarkable volume which had caught our mutual attention as we traveled from the obscure library in the Rue Montmarte to the room where Dupin lodged. It was there that I was first made aware of the rigorous requirements of his economy; his poverty could be read in everything, from the neighborhood to the paucity of his belongings to the gaunt frame hidden within the gentleman’s costumery. I put my hands to him, he put his mouth to me, and afterwards we smoked my last cigarettes, and he told me of his excellent lineage and much of the untowardness that had afflicted his family for generations.

Dupin held me and held me spellbound.

We visited more libraries and went for more walks, and it was during one of the latter that we found ourselves in that retired and desolate portion of the city which laid claim to what would quickly become our haven and our cloister. By then, we’d mutely recognised a common temper in the other and were, and here I am not embellishing, more than eager to explore our kindred natures beyond even casually prying eyes.

And thus, I said ‘good-bye’ to the world and to former associates, admittedly these were very few at the time, and eagerly followed Dupin into perfect seclusion.

And it was perfect.

Indeed, I remember the day that the last of our humble furnishings were delivered. With an executioner’s solemnity, the front door was locked, the shutters closed, the curtains drawn, the tapers lit, and I was shedding my clothes and falling into C. Auguste Dupin and his madness without one glance back.

We were two harmless madmen existing together.

We read. We wrote. We conversed.

And we loved.

I have called it Dupin’s ‘freak of fancy…to be enamored of the Night for her own sake,’ but it was my own similar freak to be enamored of Dupin himself. I would often lie back on the tattered, claw-footed divan and gaze up at the ragged ceiling and breathe in the strong perfume of the candles and be bathed in their ghastly, feeble glow and shroud-like shadows and contemplate such things as the natures of chess and whist and draughts and mathematics and poetry all the while giving myself up to Dupin’s wild whims with abandon.

He took me any way he desired, at any hour of the true or imposed Darkness, and I adored every moment of it and every facet of him.

Our nighttime sallies into the streets, arm-in-arm, were a delight, but I always returned to our den wholly spent, exhausted in body and mind and spirit. I slept wherever and whenever slumber overtook me, and once, in the first week of our occupancy, woke in an armchair to the sight of Dupin standing about two feet away. He turned abruptly and muttered a hasty apology but not before I noted the tenting of his dressing gown. I threw myself forward onto my knees like a helpless supplicant, parted the silk, and took him in my mouth, begging him with roaming hands and tongue to not hide his lust from me.

And after that, he didn’t.

I then began to purposefully fall asleep in various states of undress, and when I woke to a scene of Dupin’s self-pleasure would, according to my own whim, aide him, join him, or simply observe him in companionable silence.

Dupin remarked to me once that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and when our conversations had finally lulled and I had yawned and rubbed my eyes for the hundredth time or let pen or dusty tome slip from my grasp, it would require but a slight lift of Dupin’s finger to bring me scampering into his lap.

He knew me. He could see, indeed, as if there were a glass pane in my chest and discerned the precise instant when I could no longer take in one more idea or insight or morsel of knowledge. He proved this again and again. And at such times, he offered me himself instead.

And I gorged.

Dupin was fickle in his preferences, but never in the strength of his ardor. Once he mounted me on the rug, snorting and pawing and nuzzling like a beast with its mate, and then, once spent, immediately and vigorously demanded that I return the favor. This continued for the better part of two days and was followed by a highly entertaining and entirely innocent tournament of draughts. For one week, we spent every afternoon in a decrepit armchair, petting and kissing and fondling, and then, suddenly, without warning or preamble, I was launched against the nearest upright surface and fellated with such force that I slammed my head against the wall and cried out, sending a cascade of plaster raining down on us.

Those were halcyon days, weeks, months, an infinity of excitements, a sea of exploration and discoveries, wrapped in sable divinity, real and counterfeit.

Eventually, I was able to read Dupin’s illustrious family tree in the lines and edges and sinews of his body and map them to his many tales of ancestral triumph and tragedy. He was, for me, more fascinating than even the forest of books in which we dwelt.

We busied our souls in dreams, and we busied our bodies in each other until the clock warned of the passage of time and I was compelled to abandon our cocoon and assume responsibilities I’d put off for much too long.

Dupin and I spend the final week mostly in each other’s arms and mostly in silence. And I noticed on the last day that the chess set, a fine antique with a colorful history that had been in Dupin’s family for decades, if not a whole century, was gray with cobwebs and blankets of dust.

I remembered the hoary figures standing tall, armies ready for battle, and traced Dupin’s words again.

_Are you not penning a romance? What a pity._

Perhaps, one day, I will.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
